80
MAY 2013
•
HEMISPHERESMAGAZINE.COM
THE NEWWAVE
Right, clockwise from top,
hawking offbeat chic on
Broadway; cured tuna
with pickled vegetables
and
escabeche
sauce
at Weczeria; designer
coffee in a neighborhood
where cabbies once
feared to tread
HIGH TIMES
Left, Grant Kook,
the bullish president
and CEO of the Golden
Opportunities Fund;
below, the penthouse
suite of The James Hotel
FROM THE AIR, SASKATOON LOOKS
like a postage stamp, a tiny patch of color
on a vast brown envelope. The largest city
in Saskatchewan, a province in Western
Canada that covers some 250,000 square
miles of prairie, Saskatoon has long repre-
sented the kind of nice-enough backwater
se lement where the locals smile at you
for no reason and the kids leave home at
the earliest opportunity.
From the ground, too, Saskatoon
seems a perfectly run-of-the-mill North
American enclave. A river flows languidly
through the city center. A couple of old-
school movie theaters keep the locals
entertained. There’s a casual bar called
Flint that everybody seems to hit sooner
or later. And if you need a new suit, you
buy one from Atch & Co., owned by Sas-
katoon’s mayor, Don Atchison.
That’s how Saskatoon has been for as
long as anyone can remember. But walk
its streets today, and you catch glimpses
of something new emerging. On Broad-
way, across from the beer-and-shot joint
Bud’s, you’ll find Weczeria, a swanky
French eatery where the wine list has
city in Canada, the type of place where
Asian business execs snap up farmland
and the local art center has Picassos on
the walls. “High-net-worth people keep
coming throughhere, looking for things to
invest in,” says Grant Kook, president and
CEO of the Golden Opportunities Fund, a
local venture capital firm. It’s a comment
that a decade ago might have been taken
for sarcasm.
The reason for Saskatoon’s rapid rise in
fortune can be summed up in two words:
buried treasure. Saskatchewan has been
pumping oil from the ground for more
than five decades, but over the past five
featured a “Bordeaux-inspired” red at $175
a pop. Nearby is The James Hotel, a
boutique establishment whose “luxuri-
ous and progressive” lounge is invariably
jammedwith patrons who appear to have
been plucked out of Brooklyn.
The James opened in late 2011, roughly
five years after the onset of what has
been dubbed the “Saskaboom”—a period
of double-digit growth that has le this
blue-collar city with the feel, if not quite
the look, of a miniature, chillier Dubai.
Saskatoon is now the fastest-growing
BOARDING PASS
Want to see for
yourself what a modern-day boomtown
looks like? United can get you there
with nonstop service to Saskatoon,
Saskatchewan, from its U.S. hub in
Denver. Beginning in August, the existing
one-stop service from Chicago will
become nonstop service.
To see detailed
schedule information or to book your
flight, go to united.com.
